


Real or Not Real

by kuroi_atropos



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2518688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuroi_atropos/pseuds/kuroi_atropos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not really Loki's fault that Clint Barton got thrown through time, but he's definitely at fault for the world finding out about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Vague mention of suicidal thoughts, PTSD, and the general craptasticness that is the world of the Hunger Games. Mentions of brainwashing, comic violence, and technobabble. 
> 
> This was started ages ago, pre-Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Cap 2, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, so it isn’t really “canon” compliant any more.

_12 Years and 3 Months After Incident_

Phil Coulson sipped his coffee and looked across the table at the young man that was mopping up every last dredge of gravy with his roll and took a sip of his coffee.

It was hard to believe that 20 minutes ago, this kid had saved the lives of three of his agents with a well-placed arrow while dressed in a sparkly purple get up from his circus act. Coulson wasn’t sure exactly how that color scheme was considered a good idea even for something so showy, but whatever worked for the archer.

“Have you given it any consideration?” He asked calmly, mentally already going through the needed forms and placement tests they’d have to run.

He should have stuck to not making assumptions however, because the next thing that came out of the brat’s thankfully empty mouth was “I’m sure that you would want to deal with my authority issues about as much as I’d want to wear a suit. Thanks for the food though.” And then just like that the kid was out the door.

Coulson blinked, nearly completely thrown off, before he dropped a fifty on the table and bolted after the fast little twerp. The kid was simply too skilled to leave it at that.

“I can promise you that you wouldn’t have to wear one often." Coulson told him as he caught up. "For most field agents with specialties like yours, we’re fairly loose with our dress code policies and design protective field gear to your specifications. As for authority issues, I’m sure we can find a work around.”

Grey blue eyes blinked at him before reflective, purple shades that matched the outfit covered them. “Look, Agent Coulson, I’m not disputing that it sounds like a great opportunity. I just really have issues with the whole scary government agency thing you’re inviting me to join. With my family I’ve learned the hard way that governments aren’t always that fair, and have a tendency to ask for more than you can give and rarely offer anything back.”

It was Coulson’s turn to blink and he mentally cursed that his enthusiasm to snag this kid had gotten the better of him and he hadn’t waited for the back ground check to plan his recruiting pitch. This was just what he needed, a prime possible candidate that had someone in the system… He’d have to find out who it was and try again later.

For now, he merely nodded and said his goodbyes, no matter how temporary he was determined they would be.

XxXxX

_12 Years, 3 Months, and 9 Days After Incident_

Coulson stared at the open file on his desk in the New York Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division office.

“You’ve certainly found an interesting one, Coulson, I think if we play it right he’ll definitely be worth it,” Agent Maria Hill said idly as she poked through his side bar, trying to find where he hid his creamer for her coffee (even she knew better than to take any from the full pot that had just finished percolating, only Fury could get away with that).

“It takes someone pretty spectacular to get that out of you about a new agent, Hill. Want to give me an overview?”

“If you tell me where the creamer is.”

“Third drawer on your left,” Coulson hid a smirk behind his own cup of coffee as Hill practically dove for the drawer and quickly poured some into her travel mug.

“His aim is every bit as good as you suspected. His shows are insanely complicated and he hasn’t missed a shot by even half an inch – the agents you assigned measured. He also figured out he was being tailed and kept losing our agents to the point they’d have to go back to his circus and wait for him to show up again. He had pizza delivered to their hotel room.” Coulson had to chuckle at that particular ballsy move.

When the mirth finally died down, Coulson held up the file. “Any idea on why his family would give him a bad view on big bad government agencies?”

Hill nodded and took a sip of coffee, settling into the chair across from his desk. “His parents died when he was young, leaving him and an older brother, Bernard – Barney for short. We’re not completely sure on his age because we could find birth records on the brother, but we have nothing on him.” Coulson raised an eyebrow at her. The foster care system did give a lot of kids bad impressions of the government, but not to the level that Clint had. “It was bad. They were in a group home for a while and details of that place weren’t pretty. They took off about a month before the bastards running it were busted for a variety of crimes that ranged from emotional abuse to child prostitution. The records were fudged too which is why we can’t trust them in place of his missing birth certificate.”

Coulson scowled. That would be hell for the security clearance that he wanted to get his new agent. "Where'd they take off to? They wouldn't have been in a home if they had any other family left."

“Records are really sketchy for a while, a police report or two that might be them and that’s the most we could find. We’re pretty sure that it wasn’t more than a year before they were picked up by the Carson Carnival of Travelling Wonders.”

“You’re telling me that he and his brother actually succeeded in running away to join the circus?”

“Yes.”

“Fabulous.” Coulson was smiling more and more with every tidbit Hill told him as he scanned through the file. That was until he noticed two names.

“Jacques Duquesne and Buck Chisholm? How are they involved?”

Maria scowled, “Apparently, they were using the circus to hide from a bit of a tangle with a theft gone wrong. Clint was good enough that he caught their attention and they took to training him. You saw the results.”

He raised his eyebrow again at Hill who smirked. “Clint found out about their backgrounds and didn’t take it lightly; tried to inform the cops but those bastards found out he planned on turning them in and beat him to a pulp, leaving him for dead. Sad thing is Barney went with them rather than Clint.”

“Ouch.”

“Agreed. Then the police tried to pin some local crimes that the three committed on Clint and only the other members of the circus providing alibies kept him out of jail.”

“He still helped us though,” Coulson stated as he eyed the file that would fill in the exact details of the over view Hill had given him, and couldn’t help but smile again. Somehow, he just knew Clint Barton was still the teen that would try to hand in the bad guys. Coulson would just have to dig a little bit to find that kid beneath all the hurt and anger.

XxXxX

_19 Years and 11 Months After Incident_

Black Widow stared up the shaft of the actual damned arrow that was pointing at her to the blue-gray eyes of the man sent to kill her - the same man that had just beaten her.

She didn’t bother to rage or scream or shout. He’d hunted her across nine countries, saved four contracts from her bite, and now had her trapped. In a field. In Switzerland. Of all the places to die... Well, at least it looked pretty.

The man in black stared down at where she lay, the spent electrified arrow he had tagged her with shaken loose from her side and lying in the grass beside them. He’d somehow managed to nail her as she tried to dart away from the body of the blonde-haired woman that had joined him on his hunt after the debacle in Tai Pei.

He just stood there, arrow knocked and ready to fly and she could barely lift a finger due to sheer exhaustion and that stupid electric arrow (she knew it would take several minutes for the tremors to stop). He’d won and they both knew it. Still, while she knew when she was beaten, she wasn’t quite sure of what to make of the look in his eyes as he viewed her twitching form. She really wasn’t sure what to think when instead of releasing the arrow to finally put her out of commission, he relaxed the tension in the string and placed the arrow back in his quiver. Then, to her utter surprise and confusion, he turned and moved away.

Even with the remaining jolts of electricity coursing through her system she managed to drop her head to the side and watch. The agent looked young as he lay down beside the dead blonde woman, petting her hair. It really wasn’t fair that he had defeated her but was more interested in the woman that she had killed.

Why wasn’t he killing her?

In their world when you were beaten, you died. End of story.

Why was he ignoring her?

Black Widow wasn’t sure how long he lay there, trailing his fingers through the woman’s hair. It was enough time that she’d begun to feel her limbs again and was mostly confident that she could put up a decent fight. However, she was far more transfixed on the sight before her. She’d never really seen this with her targets… this mourning. It made something inside of her feel strange in a way that her training wouldn’t allow her to describe, even to herself.

She’d almost recovered to a point where she could get away when the man stood up, his dismissing gaze making her freeze again. He simply walked over to a patch of wild flowers several feet away and used a combat knife from his boot to start cutting bunches of them.

His back was open. She could remove him—kill him. As good as he was, she bet that she could get him in the back of the head. Why wasn’t she firing at him?

Why was she kneeling beside him to help him cut flowers and carry them over to the woman she had just beaten? The dead body should be ignored, forgotten, shouldn’t it?

She hovered behind him, unsure of what to do as he arranged the flowers all over the woman until they had created a sort of burial shroud. Then he leaned down and kissed the blonde’s forehead for a moment before sitting back on his heels. Then he did something even stranger than everything he’d just done: he started singing. It was a sad, haunting song in English that made her ache for the emotions in it.

How could he still feel that? He was like her—better than her in certain ways even. How could he still feel all of that?

By the time the last line had faded from the air, she was sitting, legs drawn up to her chest with her arms locked around them and her head resting on her knees. She barely cared when the man left the woman to sit beside her in the field grass.

Eventually she looked up and stared at the woman. She didn’t have to glance at him to know that he was watching the body too.

“Back in town, you pretty much lost us.” Black Widow didn’t say anything. “I was already getting ready to check for exit points when we heard the screams.” Black Widow cocked her head to the side, still gazing at the flower-covered woman. She had darted down a back alley, found a young girl maybe 12 or 13 years old that was about to be raped and castrated the man before slitting his throat and continuing to run.

“Mockingbi-” he paused and swallowed. “Bobby, she knew what she was doing. She signed up for this. That girl was innocent and you saved her.”

She had been stressed at another too-close call, exhausted from nearly 62 hours with only moments resting her eyes and seeing that man holding the girl down unsettled something inside of her that she had thought she’d long since accepted.

“I’m sure that you know I can’t let you go free, so I’m going to give you a few choices.”

Choices?

“The first is obviously that I put an arrow through your eye.” Black Widow couldn’t help but smirk at that. “Stop that.” She removed her smirk at his tone, feeling a shiver of something strange creep up her spine again. “The second is that you go to jail. It’ll be a special one so that even someone with your skills can’t escape.” She scowled at that, doubting it slightly, but pretty sure it would harder than anything she had ever done before. “The last is that you come back with me.”

She froze again. The man obviously wasn’t going to say anything more until she replied, but she wasn’t sure what he meant. Turning, she studied his profile. “Back with you?”

He nodded, “I can’t promise it’ll be easy, or that we’ll never ask you to use your particular skillset, but I can promise you that we’re about as good as you can get these days. And the difference you made for that girl—the one that I’m guessing no one made for you—you’ll get to be that difference a lot more often and it won’t just be by chance.”

Black Widow stared at him for a while before Natasha finally nodded at him and said simply, “Take me with you.”

XxXxX

_22 Years and 1 Month After Incident_

Pepper shifted the bag of groceries in her arms to glance at her watch as she rode the elevator of Stark Tower up to the penthouse area that housed the Avengers. She had long since alerted Jarvis to notify her of any strange occurrences (they’d had to adjust the parameters and definition of ‘strange’ after the first few weeks since, well, it was a group of super heroes and she needed SOME sleep) and luckily this night’s weirdness was a relatively easy fix since she had already been on her way to the Tower and there was a Whole Foods on her way.

Thanks to Jarvis inventory of the Tower, she knew that every other week or so all four of the kitchens somehow went from well stocked to nearly empty, usually overnight. She’d asked Jarvis about it and the A.I. had merely stated that the ‘strangeness’ had been caused by an Avenger and that the staff couldn’t anticipate the problem without research out of their purview (although Jarvis was close to working out a likely algorithm for when this particular instance would happen to help prevent future predicaments). Since Jarvis assured her that he had it in hand, Pepper had shelved it, remembering some of Tony’s truly terrifying binges when he hadn’t slept for over 72 hours and figured that one of the other Avengers had the same issue and they just ran into each other.

Still tonight, Pepper had been pinged when the fridge and pantries in the main kitchen and the lounge kitchen had been cleared completely and Jarvis had fretted about the Chef being able to make breakfast for everyone in the morning. The household staff were exemplary and kept a tight ship at Jarvis’s direction (they stayed away from labs, knew to give warning before entering rooms to avoid getting shot, didn’t gawk at the heroes, covered each other’s duties as needed, and in return were paid ridiculous sums to put up with the insanity that was Tony Stark and his new friends) but even they’d be hard pressed to make a healthy meal from the contents of Tony’s lab kitchen or the roof kitchen. They might be able to scrounge something from the various in-suite bars or kitchenettes, but Pepper figured it would be easier and less life threatening to do a basic re-stock on it now and have the delivery service make a special run tomorrow.

The doors to the main floor opened and Pepper kicked her stilettos off towards the couch so she could push the bags at her feet into the hall with her feet only to jump and clutch at the bags in her arms as a sharp yelp came from where her shoe landed. After a startled yelp of her own, she watched in surprise as Clint rolled off the sofa rubbing his arm.

“Oh my gosh, Clint, I am so sorry!” Pepper quickly put the bags in her arms down next to the other bags that Happy had placed on the floor for her and trusted Jarvis to hold the elevator as she rushed over to Clint, dropping her purse and coat on the floor just inside the doors.

The archer, who had been sprawled out on the couch, still wore a heavy coat and had obviously just gotten back from somewhere, given that the chill radiating off of him was even worse than what was coming from her.

“I should have looked where I was kicking those! Let me take a look,” she tried to reach for Clint’s shoulder only to have the archer wave his un-injured arm in her direction and smile reassuringly.

“’S okay, Pepper.” A twist of the arm in question and a quick stretch (there were enough pops there that Pepper couldn’t help but be a little jealous) and Clint changed from smiling to outright grinning. “It didn’t have much force, and was a thankfully non-messy reminder not to let my guard down.” Oh, now she felt horrible. Clint and Natasha were almost as bad as Bruce at adjusting to being in the Tower and here she’d brained him with a shoe just when he was getting comfortable.

“What is all that? Need a hand?” Clint pointed his chin at the pile of bags in the elevator.

Pepper smiled. She kind of liked having gentlemen around. Tony had countered by increasing the number of robots around to do her whim so he could still take care of her but he didn’t have to do any manual labor he didn’t want to do. “While the thought is appreciated, you are not helping me with groceries after I hit you with a five inch stiletto.”

“No harm done. And I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t at least carry a few bags.” Clint had stayed smiling at that, but something had shifted in his eyes as she mentioned what was in the bags. Pepper scrutinized him for a few moments, but nodded finally - her well trained BS sensor not alerting her even if something did feel off.

They’d managed to get all the bags to the main kitchen and Pepper opened the fridge, only to sigh a little at the fact that it was literally empty. Jarvis’s sensors had told her so, and she had seen some of the heightened metabolisms at work on the Avengers in action, but the delivery service had just done a drop off so this was a little ridiculous.

She turned, only to see Clint carefully holding out the eggs and the bags of peppers and mushrooms. She smiled and got to work sorting items into the fridge and pantry. With Clint’s help, she managed to finish in no time flat.

Pepper sighed in happiness as she pressed a button on the coffee machine and it whirred to life to make her usual wind down blend. Tony was not allowed to touch any of the settings on this coffee maker, no matter what shape the industrial sized monster in his lab kitchen was in, and she had only grown more territorial over her presets after the other Avengers moved in.

After her perfectly brewed decaf was poured, she arched an eyebrow at Clint and waved at the coffee machine. Clint smiled that same smile as when she’d mentioned the groceries earlier and after dry wiping his mug (Clint always used the same one, as opposed to Natasha who never touched the same utensil twice if she could help it and made sure everything was sterilized 3 times) pressed the button for the hot chocolate. They stood there in companionable silence for few minutes while his drink brewed and Pepper smiled slightly as she saw him put in a dash of the plum syrup. She was really glad that she’d ordered such a large range of the drink mixers. She liked knowing that the others could have everything just the way they enjoyed it no matter how esoteric their world-hopping tastes were.

Their calm silence was broken by Jarvis after a few minutes. “Mr. Barton, Mr. Jeffries with the shelter is on the line. Would you like me to put him on speaker?” Clint’s eyes flew to Pepper’s and she found surprise overruling her confusion. He was a master assassin that could face down Loki and not flinch after everything that monster had done to him, and yet she would almost say that he looked…scared?

When Clint just kept staring at her rather than answering Jarvis, Pepper sighed and took charge. “Please patch him through, Jarvis.”

“Right away Ms. Potts. And may I say that you are looking particularly beautiful this evening.” Pepper mentally noted to thank Tony for the thought, but remind him that it was a little creepy having Jarvis compliment her all the time and to turn that feature off.

“Clint, it’s Davis. I just got back and saw all the food that you dropped off with Maggie and I can’t thank you enough. We were going to be pretty tight this week and it’s more than enough to get us over the hump.” Clint practically cringed away from her, even though the look on his face had turned defiant, like he thought he was wrong and was expecting to be harshly chastised for what he had done even if he wasn’t sorry. 

Pepper finally put together the pieces of what had been causing the random grocery disappearances. She settled her mug on the counter and just stood there for a second. Then, knowing full well that she was placing her life in her hands, she stepped forward and hugged Clint, pecking him on the cheek as she released him. Clint just stood there and gaped at her.

“Clint?” Pepper smiled at the still cautiously grateful sounding man over the phone and waved at Clint to answer the poor man, even as she dug through a few drawers and found one of the spare Starkpads that Tony had the tendency to leave lying around and grabbed a spare chopstick to use as stylus since the slot for this one was empty. She tapped through a few screens as she listened to Clint talk to Davis. The kids were ecstatic at the thought of the gooey brownies from the boxes of mix and the earlier mentioned Maggie was already happily slicing up the bushels of apples for the kids breakfast tomorrow morning.

Pepper mumbled a quick thanks to Jarvis as he provided her the phone number and address along with the back ground info to the shelter that Clint had apparently been donating Avengers supplies to. It was a full on Children’s Shelter at that – Pepper smiled wider - one that, according to Jarvis’s research, was completely on the up and up.

While Stark Industries did its fair share of Charity work (even more since Loki) this felt like something special and even though she would add some of the standard donations to the group of kids that Clint was currently beaming over, she didn’t feel that was enough.

With an utmost glee that made her almost giggly, Pepper quickly shuffled the delivery schedule of certain goods, parsed out a few things, added a couple of extra items that she considered necessary for kids to have along with a few ‘for fun’ food stuffs recommended by Jarvis based on transcripts of some of Clint’s past thank you calls and notes from the kiddies. Then, with a completely unnecessary flourish on her signature, she promptly arranged for 2 of the 4 standard deliveries a week to drop off directly at the shelter. She flicked her finger on the screen and the new order details appeared on the holo board near the coffee maker where Clint froze in mid-sentence when he saw it, and she was quite proud to have completely broken his normal composure in such a positive way. Slowly, ever so slowly, a look of almost pure disbelief and joyous shock took over his face.

“I…. Pepper, are you sure? I mean, I….” she grinned.

“What was that, Clint?” Davis asked.

When Clint just stared at her a little dumbstruck, Pepper smiled and spoke up. “Mr. Jeffries? My name is Pepper, I’m a friend of Clint’s, sorry we didn’t warn you but you’re on speaker.”

“Oh, hi. Sorry about that. Nice to meet you, ma’am. Please, call me Davis.” The man sounded delightfully abashed, and Pepper grinned at the thought of what he would sound like once Pepper talked to the people in charge of the community outreach programs and set up some Avengers fundraisers and community service options. The normal donations weren’t personal enough for something that meant so much to Clint that it rendered him nearly speechless.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Davis. Clint is currently a little tongue tied over some good news he just got that I am sure he’d love to relay personally. Give him a few moments.”

“Uhh, yeah. I mean, yes, sure, thank you very much.” Pepper smiled as Clint outright beamed at her and started excitedly explaining the new deliveries to Davis. Oh, he looked like a little kid on Christmas.

Pepper, with great relish, shot off the email stating that if any of the Avengers and their various entourages had any issues running out of things for the span of 2-3 days, they could just go buy whatever it was themselves.

Oh, and they would be doing public appearances at a shelter as soon as she finalized the schedule.

XxXxX

_22 Years, 1 Month, and 3 Weeks After Incident_

Bruce had an entire mental list of things he knew he was good at, no matter what his Other-Guy-induced-insecurities told him. For instance, he knew gamma radiation inside and out, could knock most people out of the park on physics, was pretty decent at biology, engineering, and computers - not to mention that he made a mean curry.

Nowhere on that particular list was dealing with children.

He’d had to handle the occasional sponsor’s child before his transformation, or maybe a random prodigy or two. Then after the Other Guy came along, while he’d learned to deal with sick kids for the most part, he still tried to avoid humans under the age of 25 for the sheer annoyance or loudness factors, not to mention the fact that as fragile as humans were compared to the Other Guy, kids were even more so and the idea of handling something that… breakable scared him.

In conclusion, he had no real idea who decided it would be good to drag him out of his lab and make him attend some type of publicity event at a children’s shelter. He couldn’t even hide in the corner, because every time he tried, either Tony or Clint would drag him into something.

Tony seemed to be having a ton of fun just sitting there and arguing engineering with some of the kids (who, surprisingly enough, seemed to actually understand what he was talking about) and somehow during the course of this thing a huge number of Lego, K’Nex, and dozens of other kid appropriate building sets, were delivered so that Tony and his band of miscreants could start testing their ideas.

Pepper and Natasha were holding what amounted to some sort of court with a good chunk of the girls, and the not-on-camera focused conversations seemed to basically be them teaching the girls how to handle people that couldn't take 'no' for an answer (although he might have heard several tangents pertaining to how to rule the universe, he deliberately stopped paying attention when he heard the words "castration by stiletto heel").

At present, Steve was huddled over a low seated table with a bunch of the kids that had drawn various pictures and was giving impromptu art lessons (there had been a mysterious delivery of art supplies also.)

Thor and Jane were swamped by most of the younger kids who thought it was _beyond_ awesome that Thor was a Prince that could shoot lightning. More than one had said something about his pretty hair (and no one had managed to not smile at that) and he apparently told amazing stories.

Bruce however, had been dragged into what was apparently a rather standard pick-up basketball game lead by Clint with most of the teenagers and was surprisingly (and he would not admit this to anyone should they ask or even hint) having a blast with it. Leading a basketball team opposite of a trained assassin so that the orphanage owner could talk to the press (that were absolutely going to town with the photos) was not something he had ever thought he would do, but Bruce had to admit to himself that he was enjoying it.

Still, Bruce couldn’t help but be grateful it was his rotation out and he happily snagged his disposable red cup and filled it at the painfully yellow water cooler. As he started chugging it, he heard Clint chuckle a little as the archer meandered up with his own water bottle that he’d snagged from the Kitchen here and filled it up about halfway before he let Bruce fill up his cup again. Bruce couldn’t help but smile, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Clint said with a grin of his own as he watched the kids on the court along with the range of children that that sat on the sidelines watching the game.

Bruce settled against the wall next to the card table with the cooler as he followed the archer’s gaze. The fact that they were here, helping, well… “I don’t know how much of my file you’ve read, probably all of it,” Clint merely nodded neutrally, “so you know I didn’t have the happiest childhood.” The archer turned his head and looked at Bruce this time, and he felt no shame in the fact that he shifted under the intense gaze.

The man’s nod this time was a bit more decisive. Bruce sighed a bit, “I ended up in half-way houses and places like this once or twice, and from what I can see, I wish that those places had had someone like you when I was growing up.”

Clint was now looking rather gob smacked (well, for Clint), but it was true. Earlier, Bruce hadn’t really been surprised when the archer seemed to know every kid, every story, and every hope and dream that went along with them. He’d been able to shift the slightly awkward Avengers (except for Cap who cited experience) to kids that helped get them engaged in activities, and had ultimately made this more than just a photo shoot.

If he thought about it, it really kind of fit. Clint was the one that had gotten all of the Avengers to talk after the invasion, and had really knitted them together despite being the technical last to join the group even if, according to the reports Tony had shown everyone, he’d been the first of them all picked by Fury. (There was photographic evidence of Clint’s shocked face at that revelation; Tony was saving it for when he wanted to blackmail Clint into shooting someone with a paint arrow.)

Bruce didn’t say anything as Clint quickly recovered. Instead, he chose to turn and cheer for his own team as he made sure to drink enough water so that he hopefully wouldn’t die on his next round in. He really wasn’t the best at this whole sports thing, even if being on a team with the others (heck even Tony boxed and spent an hour at the gym everyday) had gotten him to figure out ways of exercising without letting the Other Guy out, although the Green Guy had discovered a love of swimming that just did not need mentioning.

He and Clint had just begun to make their way over to the line since it was about time for them to get tapped in, when the screams started. Both of them turned towards the front of the shelter where the commotion seemed to be coming from. Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce saw Clint pull a gun from somewhere he wasn’t too sure about.

Then a wall came down, some of the ceiling started to crumble towards a group of kids that had just been watching the game, and Bruce saw green.

XxXxX

Hulk was not happy.

Annoying people were interrupting playing with the ball, and that wasn’t fun.

And they scared the kids. Hulk didn’t like scared kids. They should be happy and playing and safe.

These annoying people were dressed funny, too. Not in uniforms or the fancy colors his friends wore a lot, they were all in neon yellow and blue and were bright and annoying. They smashed really well though.

Birdie was fast and got the kids out of his way, letting Hulk smash as much as he wanted. Birdie was nice that way.

One of the last yellow-blue guys decided to try to be stupid-smart and ran towards the kids while Birdie was busy smashing a few of the others. The stupid-smart guy grabbed a little girl who was crying and they made her drop her doll. Hulk roared and raced towards them, but then realized he couldn’t hurt stupid-smart because he’d hurt the girl too. He paused, not sure what to do. He didn’t want to smash the little girl.

Suddenly there was a loud bang next to him and the man holding the little girl screamed as blood burst from the shoulder of the arm with the girl, dropping her. Birdie darted past Hulk and punched the stupid-smart guy unconscious. Hulk stared at Birdie, who looked as sad as Red normally did as he finished the others off with a few more bangs and fast moves before Hulk could smash them. When it was just them and the kids and a few of the funny people with cameras left, Hulk huffed. He still wanted to smash!

After a few moments, Birdie nudged him towards the kids, but kept looking around for more stupid-smart people and Hulk knew that Birdie would warn Hulk if he needed to smash them.

Hulk shuffled forward a little and picked up the one girl’s doll, holding it out to her with a bit of a grunt. Maybe that would make her smile and if she smiled maybe the others would too.

The little girl looked up at him with tears falling down her cheeks and then jumped right at him hugging him. And Hulk fell backwards onto his butt, shocked. She wasn’t scared of him at all! If Birdie hadn’t been helping to hold her a little, she would have fallen and might have been hurt because his hands didn’t want to move to hold her. Hulk wasn’t sure what to do. He could smash the tiny girl really easy.

Birdie smiled at him and moved Hulk’s arm so that it was under the girl, and then Birdie waved some of the other kids over, saying that it was okay, and that Hulk would protect them. 

Birdie then promptly left Hulk with the kids, and Hulk couldn’t help but feel more confused and scared than he remembered ever feeling before.

XxXxX

  
One of the things that Bruce had noticed about being angry all the time was that it did, to an extent, make it harder for him to get generally annoyed.

Waking up after a Hulk out to find several of the kids he’d been afraid of hurting (especially the sleeping, blonde haired little girl on his chest) gathered around him was, to say the least, confusing. Remembering that it had been some truly stupid criminals that had decided to try and crash the Avengers publicity appearance at the shelter was worrying. Tony snapping pictures and cooing while the press gawked (and of course their cameras were all still rolling) and Clint looking all gooey eyed….

Oh someone was going to pay. Right after he figured out why he was being used as a pillow, and who drew flowers on his chest. He could only thank heaven that he hadn’t lost his pants this time.

XxXxX

_25 Years and 20 Days After Incident_

Cap glared at the flying squid as it calmly chewed on a lamppost. How was this his life? Really? How had he gotten involved with giant flying squids from space - that could somehow survive both the void of space and the Earth’s atmosphere - that had, for some reason, decided New York—rather than LA, or London, or Tokyo, or _anywhere else—_ would make a good snack place and breeding ground?

The thing was, they didn’t seem like they were really trying to hurt people. They just ate metal. Not that that didn’t have its problems, but they were even leaving anything that actually moved alone. Still, of course, people had panicked and so here he was on a gloriously beautiful day, fighting giant squids… from space.

Given that he wasn’t very inclined to throw his Shield again after he’d barely gotten it back from the one that decided to try snacking on it (apparently it was too hard), Cap was rather limited in his reactions to the things, and that certainly wasn’t helping, either. He fought the urge to sigh into his mic as Tony hit a particularly high note of whine on the comms.

“But it’s an ALLOY! This isn’t fair! I should not be food!”

“Face it, Tin Can, you’re just absolutely delicious,” Hawkeye deadpanned, his words punctuated by the familiar twang of his bow. The archer had been switching between armaments this fight as they thought up new things to try, but so far the man’s nets, bollas, and flash bangs were proving the most effective in caging the creatures into the area they’d set up. Thor was working with Stephen Strange (who was a Sorcerer, of all things—as in magic capes and flying and spells and… all Cap could do was think how much fun Howard would have tearing that to pieces) to create portals into an uninhabited area of space with some resource-rich asteroids the things could chew on instead.

He didn’t even _want_ to think about what they… excreted.

Tony, unused to not being one of the most useful people and thus hitting the before mentioned high notes of whine, had to float above the fight to try and scare the creatures back with loud noises from his speakers since they were trying not to hurt the poor little innocent creatures and his weapons were predominantly heavy hitting. Black Widow just chuckled every now and then as she kept up with Hawkeye, keeping him stocked with replacement arrows as he’d run out of his original quiver.

Cap was still trying to figure out a way to be more directly useful, but again with them EATING HIS SHIELD! And while regular net launchers and normal flash bangs would work, the squids liked hovering about half way up the sky scrapers, and no one was quite as successful as Hawkeye and Black Widow about using grappling hooks, lines, and random pieces of hover tech to quickly maneuver around the things. (Also the less mentioned about Cap’s archery skills, the better. He had to regularly bribe Pepper with Chocolates to make sure Tony didn’t let lose that one video on YouTube.)

Cap sighed.

Then Natasha actually swore over the comms and Cap swung towards the roof he was pretty sure the assassins were on. “Report! Black Widow! Hawkeye!” A pained grunt from Clint was his only answer, and Steve moved.

“On my way. Jarvis, see if you can get eyes on them!” came Tony’s shout and Steve didn’t bother arguing about him abandoning flying squid herding duties since S.H.I.E.L.D. and the rest of the government agencies were doing fairly good at keeping the remaining ones in check now that Hawkeye and Widow had thinned them down.

Steve quickly waved down one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new hover bikes and after commandeering it, sped for the roof, already sinking back into battle mode to stave off his worry. What could take both Natasha and Clint? With their combination of long distance and up close skills, no one -

“After reviewing the initial data, it appears that Loki is on the roof with them,” Jarvis’ calm voice came over the comm. Steve’s breath caught in his throat for a millisecond even as Tony cursed, and suddenly there was a low growl that Cap knew meant that Bruce was having a hard time fighting down the Other Guy.

“THOR!” Steve screamed. What was Loki doing here? Were the space squids a distraction? How was he even here? He should still be locked up on Asgard!

“I have him,” the God of Lightning replied grimly. Cap finally managed to get eyes on the roof, only to see Clint’s left arm twisted painfully above his head as he was forced into a kneeling position at Loki’s feet. Thor shot down and landed on the roof across from them followed by Tony, who hovered above Thor’s head. Angrily, the god pointed his hammer at his brother. Steve’s eyes took in every smug inch of Loki, terrifying quiet in Clint, and tense attitude of the rest of his team even as he slammed the bike into hover mode and jumped onto the roof, looking for Natasha. He found her crumpled on the floor near the side wall of the roof. He didn’t see any blood, but she wasn’t moving. 

“Loki! Release my comrade and answer! How is it you have come here?”

“You always fall for the same tricks, brother. As for Mother and Father, well, they were harder to fool but I have done so before,” Loki smirked. Somehow the staff that should have been locked up safely in a S.H.I.E.L.D. safe that didn’t technically exist was in the hand the god wasn’t using to keep Clint pinned. “And as for my Archer, well, why would I give up what I came for?”

Clint, who had been coiled tight, absolutely froze stiff at that.

Steve knew without a doubt that quite a number of Clint’s nightmares had just come to life.

Clint’s right hand, which had been carefully hovering to his side, darted to his holster faster than even Cap could follow and one of the thin vibranium knives that Tony had made for Clint and Natasha slashed up and stabbed the wrist holding the staff. The extremely rare metal, one of the few things they’d found on Earth that could hurt Thor when wielded by normal humans, did its job. The irksome god somehow managed to toss the archer even with blood spurting from his wrist, causing the staff to fall to the ground. Cap darted forward to try and catch Clint, but even with his reflexes he wasn’t fast enough. Instead Steve barely managed to angle himself to deflect his friends limp arc to take him to the pavement rather than over the side of the roof. Thor and Tony took the opening and started blasting.

Steve and Clint balanced against each other as they got to their feet, and Steve kept a good chunk of his attention on that damn knife still clutched in Clint’s slightly trembling hand. The memory of the onetime Clint had gotten hit with a really bad truth serum and admitted that he would rather kill himself than be used to hurt people he cared about again kept pushing to the front of Steve’s mind. Steve almost had to tell the stupid train of thought to derail out loud.

A hand darted between the two of them from behind and Steve shouted as Loki wrapped his arms around Clint so tightly the archer couldn’t move and the god threw them forward into a weird portal that appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast.

“CLINT!”


	2. Chapter Two

It had been two days, and Steve wasn’t sure if Natasha would ever forgive him. He wasn’t sure if he could forgive himself.

He’d had a hand on Clint and Loki had still taken him.

They’d all fallen for that stupid duplicate trick that had put Thor in a cage and gotten Coulson killed.

And now it had gotten Clint captured by that madman again.

And just like last time they couldn’t find Clint or Loki, and could only wait.

At least they had the staff, though, which was a small blessing as it couldn’t be used to make anyone a puppet, though several teams were now tasked with determining if anyone already had been. Between Tony and Fury, they had found the bastard responsible for it being loose in the world a second time and Steve doubted the un-entranced, greedy jerk off would ever see the light of day again. Still, it was now sitting in Tony’s lab as a grim reminder that they currently didn’t trust anyone else with it as long as Clint was missing and it could be used to control minds.

Just no.

The entire team was currently hovering in said lab and Tony wasn’t even complaining at them crowding his space despite the fact that none of them were exactly quiet right now. Natasha kept a consistent flow of conversations into various phones and plugged away on various laptops in more languages than Steve could keep up with. Thor did the same with a magic mirror that connected him to Heimdall who was currently trying to find Loki too, and had Jane at his side working on trying to track when exactly Loki had arrived on Earth with some frankly terrifying equations. Tony himself and Bruce were flitting between computer stations and Steve was mainly just trying to make sure they ate and slept now and then.

He wasn’t having much luck. Actually, he only tended to succeed when Pepper or Hill forced their way into the lab and started in on everyone.

“Sirs, I think that you should see this,” came Jarvis’s voice over Tony’s speakers, and Tony’s main holoprojector kicked on to a news channel.

“-is Jessica Jones, live from New York, where some type of apparent magical hologram is playing over the city, seemingly depicting the life of the currently missing Avenger, Hawkeye.”

Natasha actually swore again and as one they headed for the main common area of the Tower. Steve heard Tony and Jarvis arguing in the background while Natasha actually started hissing into a phone, most likely to Hill or Fury. Not to mention Thor’s louder pleas to Heimdall. 

They got to the room only to find Pepper quickly talking into her phone as she stared out the floor-to-ceiling glass, one of the sliding doors to the veranda open beside her while two of her aides next to her worked furiously on tablets.

Outside the glass, painted over the sky, were images, playing like they were one of Tony’s movies on rewind. The pace of the images was disconcertingly fast, slowing every now and then at random intervals. The images were accompanied by a ghostly noise that wasn’t quite sound that echoed through the open door. Steve didn’t really know how to describe it. Then, the images stopped, paused, and played forward. The scene was from, what, almost three years ago? When they’d been at a charity thing for one of the shelters that Clint always volunteered at and some idiotic wannabe bad guys had caused a Hulk out that Bruce still twitched at. _“Hulk like you. Nice.”_ It was Clint, sitting cross legged next to Hulk with Sophie, a little blonde girl that they’d managed to help find a home for (she still wrote them every single week) and Clint was looking up at Hulk with a shocked look at the words coming from the teams’ powerhouse.

_“Nah, you like Tony. He’s your favorite, right?”_

_“Hulk like Birdie. Real.”_

It started rewinding again, buzzing through pizza nights, training sessions, everything, pausing on moments that seemed to echo with some type of feeling, nostalgia, maybe?

A scene played out in the right direction again, a late night conversation with Pepper.

_“Pepper, I can’t thank you enough, I do-”_

_“Clint, that was nothing. Not compared to what you were doing for those kids, you’re a real hero, you know that, right?”_

As the images started rewinding again, Pepper’s shaking hand rose to her mouth and Tony gripped her tightly. Natasha looked fit to murder something, a knife flashing in twisting circles around her fingers, as she kept speaking into a S.H.I.E.L.D. comm in low, threatening tones.

The images moved in advance again, this time showing the aftermath of the Battle of Manhattan, as they dragged a trussed up Loki off the floor and cuffed him with manacles that Thor had magically produced.

_“Oh little Hawk, don’t look like that.”_

_“Be quiet, brother.”_

_“Oh but I’m defeated, brother. No harm can come from talking. Words don’t cause the same damage as arrows or blades, do they, Hawk?”_

_“Yeah, I’m going to go with you not talking to the assassin that you magically mind-whammied before the other assassin kills you and Point Break over there gets dragged into this again.”_ Tony's sarcasm practically bled from the sky, and Cap smiled at how protective Tony had been of the team, even back then when they were just getting going.

_“You got something around here we can gag him with?”_ Steve heard his own voice and had to stop and bring up his own memories to define if he’d been talking about Loki or Tony.

_“Oh that was kinky Cap.”_

_“Really, Stark?”_

It went back further, to the attack on the Helicarrier. It played forward, tinged with blue right up until Natasha slammed his head into a metal bar and the whole thing began to fade to black, but the distinctly strange hue had vanished.

“This is a recall,” interrupted Thor’s hushed voice. Steve turned to him and found Thor staring, a horror over his face that seemed somehow worse than that on everyone else’s. Steve felt his heart freeze.

“What’s a recall?” Tony snapped. 

“Clint’s memories, obviously,” Natasha shot back, the edges to her personality that had been showing the last few days razor sharp.

_“Nat?”_

Right as Black Widow moved to punch him again, the images started rewinding again.

“Yes, it is a blood spell that reveals the truth of a person’s past. But it is normally small, contained to a glass sphere. It should not be…” Thor waved a hand at the sky, as if at a loss for words, “this.”

It paused for a few moments and Cap could imagine Loki almost savoring this as it played through the god taking over Clint’s mind.

_“You have heart.”_

And the images took on the blue haze.

It went back again and Cap had to grit his teeth as he saw Bruce, Tony, and even Thor in Clint’s crosshairs a few times at different points, Tony normally at an event or his house, Bruce in all sorts of locals—normal foreign and third-world countries, and Thor, one night in the rain. It kept going back before the incident that had brought everyone together.

There were scenes of S.H.I.E.L.D., of Natasha, that Deadpool guy that would appear every now and then, and missions, constant missions. Flashes, for just a line or two, moving forward.

_“Incoming boogies! What the heck are those things?”_

_“Coulson! Barton hit the newbies with Nerf bullets again!”_

_“Black Widow is hit! I repeat Black Widow is down and our position is compromised! Moving to auxiliary 7!”_

Next came a memory of Clint hanging out on a couch, reading and playing with a dozing Natasha’s hair while Coulson finished paperwork, Natasha’s arm in a sling. Cap could tell that the silence in the memory felt comfortable to them.

_“We need eyes on the target! Hawkeye!”_

_“Calvary incoming!”_

Another scene started playing forward, Clint seemed to be sitting in a field of wildflowers with Natasha next to blonde woman that Steve knew had to be dead.

_“Are you for real?”_

_“Hmm?”_

_“I just killed her. I'm sure she was important to you, and now we’re waiting for a ride? Is this real?”_

_“Sure as I can be. I mean, we can play Real or Not Real if you want, but I don’t know enough about you, Natalia Romonava, to provide you a lot of answers.”_

_“Nat.”_

_“What?”_

_“If this is real, you get to call me Nat.”_

_“Hi Nat, I’m Clint.”_

Then came S.H.I.E.L.D. again, lots of S.H.I.E.L.D., flashes of scenes from Ops, faster and faster, haunting words floating down.

_“-real pain in the as-”_

_“Exemplary aim. Personal skills could use some work.”_

_“Hawkeye handles the psychological stress of missions just fine, but we’re worried he’s not forming any healthy attachments.”_

_“Pain is a tool.”_

_“Tell us!”_

A scene where a guy that moved a lot like Clint did aimed a bow at Coulson. A bunch of mooks hunkered at the strange guy’s back, helping to surround what were obviously caught-off-guard S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. The other man with the bow got an arrow to the knee, and his ghostly screams echoed from the images. The Agents in the scene snagged the advantage of the opening and began to take the other guys down.

Next from the horrible replay was Clint as a teenager, waking up in a hospital with a rather large, overly muscled guy and a bearded lady hovering over him.

_“It’s okay, Clint, we told them what we found out.”_

_“I’m real sorry about your brother, sweetie. You were always better than him.”_

_“That bastard Trickshot, I’ll put an arrow up his a-”_

“My Prince, I have found your brother.” Everyone jumped at the sudden interruption to their horrified contemplation of Clint’s past on display, looking at the mirror in Thor’s hand for a moment before they moved.

 As Thor asked for the location, lightning already playing over his form and suiting him up, Tony started stalking to his suit-up area. Natasha demanded transports from her phone, starting to strip her leather jacket off. Steve was already at the bags on the bench by the elevator that held rush versions of his, Natasha’s, and Clint’s gear. Shifting his shield so he could get his suit, he tossed Natasha’s jumpsuit behind him, trusting she would snag it from the air. She did.

“There’s already a helicopter on the roof.” Pepper said as one of her aides called into his own phone to get ready for takeoff, and then the other aide shouted in shock. Steve spun, shield pulled from the pile and at the ready, when he saw where the man was looking.

By God…

A young Clint, no more than ten years old, if that, was receiving one of the worst beat downs Steve had seen in a long, long time.

_“Nothing but a problem! If we didn’t take you in we’d be just fine! I’d be able to be a real Father! A good husband!”_

This was punctuated by another kick and Cap’s hand clenched on the grips of his shield as he followed a green tinted Bruce up the stairs to the roof, Natasha right behind him, Jane and Pepper calling out behind them to be careful. Cap handed the bag with the rest of his gear over as he zipped his own suit up.

They burst onto the roof to a repeated litany of, _“Notrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnotreal”_ from the young Clint.

The images went back again, and focused on a pair of headlights splashing over a terrified little boy, Clint’s multi-colored eyes reflecting the light as he crouched on the side of the road, only an arrow clutched in his hands.

It rewound relatively slowly after that, crawling over a young boy struggling to survive in the woods for days, strangely capable at making traps but still looking so lost and scared. They could hear his whispers to himself even as they shut themselves in the sound proofed, luxury cabin as they watched the images outside of their windows.

And then….

The images showed a small Clint, curled up next to a log, pulling an arrow out of a dead man’s eye socket, muttering, _“notrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnotreal”_

Right when the copter was taking off, Tony and Thor already shooting into the distance, the images faded to white.

The white was followed by a flash so bright it lit up the entire city.

As the helicopter rushed after Thor and Tony, Steve could only stare at the memories that appeared in reverse motion as a tiny child Clint went out from a pillar of light into the arms of the dead man that had obviously been holding him hostage, a strange gun pressed to Clint’s head. Then an arrow flew backwards and out of the man’s head and to the bow of a brown haired, iron-eyed woman.

The images reversed quickly from that, before playing again, chaotic as only a massive battle could be.

The scene went in painful, painful slow motion, and the memory seemed to twist, focus in on the machines and the other technology, even as the words continued.

_“-the Mockingjay’s child dies on live TV!”_

_“Mommy! Daddy!”_

_“You don’t want to do this!”_

_“RYE!”_

The helicopter sped across the city, and they could only watch silently as a young Clint played in fields, dancing with an older girl, a sister? As the blonde haired man and the brown haired woman that had shot the man holding Clint watched over them.

There were dark nights that the recall seemed to savor, of the brown haired woman bundling the children up, and pushing them out of the house as the man howled.

_“It’s been a while since he had a relapse. That’s a good sign, Katniss.”_

_“I love you, real or not real?”_

_“Hold your arm like this, with the elbow tilted, perfect!”_

_“You and your sister are the most precious things ever, hear me?”_

_“Aww, Rye, did you have to use the purple to paint the walls? I was short on that color…”_

There was technology there, inconsistent with a lot of the standards of living. Floating ships, bullet trains, combined with entire towns without televisions, medicine that seemed Stone Age…

But every single time that technology appeared, the recall paused over it.  

As the helicopter landed a ways from where Tony and Thor were conversing with Lady Sif and the warriors three and a man in large golden armor with a phalanx of Asgardian guards stood behind them, the scene reached the beginning of Clint’s life, and for a moment Steve was terrified that that would mean Clint would die as he hadn’t existed before that, so would that mean he would cease to exist now too? But suddenly it was like the sky split in two, each showing a different view of the blonde haired man and the dark-haired woman, Clint’s parents.

Steve, Natasha and Bruce made it to the group just in time to hear the man in the large golden armor speak. “Your Mother is already aware of the unusual nature of this recall, My Prince. Her scrying for the location of that spell was how we found him. She works to find how Loki has modified the spell as quickly as she can.” There was a pause, and Steve somehow knew Heimdall wasn’t done. “My vision was mostly clouded, My Prince, but I did see blood - much more than would be required for a normal recall.”

_“It’ll be okay, Katniss. There’s no more games, no more people controlling the food, or anything. And we’re stronger. If anyone, anyone at all comes after our kids, we will destroy them and leave their bodies for the crows.”_

_“Peeta… okay. Okay. For you, I’ll risk it.”_

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Steve said as he looked at the building they were all gathered around.

“There is a shield, for lack of a better term,” Thor stated, following his line of sight. “We guard the entrances, and have placed our own enchantments. Loki will not be able to leave, but we cannot enter yet. The magicians, including my Mother and Father, work to find us a way in.”

“I sent a full-power blast at that thing, Cap. All I managed to do was obliterate a dumpster.” Tony waved a hand over to a still slightly smoking pile of scrap metal and Cap, heroically, didn’t say anything.

All they could do was wait for word to come through the magic mirrors.

Wait and watch a relatively normal life, considering the two people whose memories or whatever played on like a movie where both parties where obviously psychologically damaged and had extreme cases of PTSD. It sped through most of their lives, not slowing down except for the occasional instance where they would be around some of that futuristic technology that had even Tony quietly dictating notes to Jarvis.

It was right as S.H.I.E.L.D. made it to the location, that things got worse. 

The images showed a war like no other.

Flying ships like the quinjets on steroids flew by, shooting strange things at each other or the ground that did a devastating amount of damage, bombing large groups of people, monsters ravaging people, horrific substances that stripped flesh from bones, and it just kept getting worse. Then, the two viewpoints really shifted apart for the first time.

They watched the girl, struggling against an uncaring military regime while the boy was tortured elsewhere and his screams echoed through the ghostly noise to the point where it nearly drowned out everything else.

It flew back a little more, and then it showed something in reverse that was so bad Cap didn’t believe it until it played in the right direction this time, still faster than real time, but slow enough they could see the sickening images.

It was obviously some type of staged arena on the water with weapons, a few packs, and they were all killing each other.

There were a few older people mixed in, but mostly younger people, some even younger than Steve had been when he first tried to volunteer for the army. The images sped even faster, staying focused on the boy and girl that would eventually be Clint’s parents. After the explosion that caused them to be split up, it reversed again.

No matter how fancy the galas around them were, Steve recognized the looks in the two teens’ eyes. He’d seen it in mirrors during his own USO days.

It flew back before the galas (slowing to show the technology more intermixed than ever), showing spreads and feasts that sharply contrasted the desolation and near poverty of the area the images returned to most often. Then it went back to another arena, and Steve watched it work back up from the parents holding berries and a pack of hungry animals with the faces of children. Then those children in more flashes as they fought and killed each other. If any of them were over eighteen Steve would eat his shield.

Steve kept praying for something, anything, to give them something to do so he wouldn’t have to watch the replay slow, as if showcasing the violence, or ghostly images of children dying playing in the air. Steve kept fighting the part of him that wanted to remember some of the things he had seen the Nazi’s do back before he’d been frozen. Then a heartbreakingly young girl died, and was covered in flowers like Clint had covered the blonde women in the earlier scene.

They watched it go even further back, to see Clint’s mother volunteer to face those horrors all to save a young blonde girl, then back further to years of hunger as the mother, now a brown-haired girl, shared a horribly small meal with the blond girl and a woman who looked like the blond girl, and then to bread in the rain and a blond woman staring blankly ahead as the two girls tried unsuccessfully to get a response from her, and then further and further back, to past the birth of Clint’s parents when the sky split again into four screens, and every year, even if the person whose memories were shown hadn’t been involved in the disgusting tradition, they were forced to watch as other children fought and died.

By the time the mirrors called out that they had a way around Loki’s magic, the recall had split twelve more times, leaving the sky a patchwork of horror. They’d seen countless more arena matches, heard their names, the Hunger Games.

Tony had thrown up behind the smoking ruins of the dumpster, Natasha had flattened a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that got too close and Bruce was off to the side with his fingers in his ears as he tried with only partial success to meditate. The Asgardian guards around him were decidedly twitchy as they tried to keep an eye on him and the disturbing images at the same time. Thor looked like a statue, eyes staring stonily ahead at the strangely shielded building as Lady Sif and the Warriors Three spoke soothingly to him. Heimdall seemed the calmest of the Asgardians as he simply stood and watched the whole scene, but he did not look happy in the slightest. For himself, Steve had clasped his hand around his shield so tightly that the edge had dug in and his hand was bleeding. He’d processed this and dismissed such irrelevancies for later addressing.  

They’d seen kids dragged away from their families screaming, failed rebellions and attempts to hide the children, and then, once again, war.

Cap was grateful they were going up against someone like Loki, someone that could take a hit.

XxXxX

_25 Years and 23 Days After Clint Barton Arrived in the Past_

It was a well-known thing among all the races Thor was familiar with that often absolute power corrupted and created a certain disregard for life of all forms. Never before though had he seen or heard of such blatant depravity. While gladiatorial combat was common enough that Thor didn’t mind such activities if the parties were willing - truthfully, he found much glory in war games if it was a worthy foe for the right cause - forcing children from conquered states to come and battle to the death for entertainment? Forcing them to slavery and parading them around, making them celebrate killing one another….

This was not something he had ever imagined his adopted people would do, and it was heartbreaking to see it happen, even if only as the glimmer of a possible future in Clint’s memories.

Thor cradled Jane’s sleeping form even closer to him as he sat in the window seat of the healing room currently holding their injured archer. Loki had nearly bled the man dry for his spell and had his Mother not accompanied the magicians to break down Loki’s magic to help him recapture his brother, their archer would not be facing so short a recovery until he could join them on the field once more…if at all.

His current war band lay spread about the room, all mostly asleep now. Even Anthony had his head cradled in the lap of the fierce Lady Pepper, her protective features softened in her repose. The only one still awake with him in introspection was the Black Widow, and hardly a shard of the fair Natasha was visible beneath the assassin’s stony mask. Thor knew she would not rest until Clint awoke, for much the same reason as Thor if for a different cause.

What little they had learned of her past with the Red Room indicated that trials like the combat they had so recently witnessed had been common, if less extreme. In her words, “we were valuable commodities. There was trouble if we damaged each other.” To her, who so jealously guarded Clint, to have seen first-hand what she had of Clint’s past, well, Loki had always wanted to be like their Father, Thor just doubted it was in the sense of losing an eye.

Thor himself had not felt more unsure of the world since his Father had stripped him of his powers and sent him careening to Midgard to learn a lesson.

Seeing the years of enforced gladiatorial conflict between children had broken the hearts of many of Thor’s adopted race and he himself was not immune to that. Already, mere hours after the incident, there was much debate raging through this supposedly simple planet as people tried to come to terms with the possibility of their future, and it was fierce enough that he’d taken to avoiding the media as much as he possibly could. Thor had learned to dread many of the press-corps as much as he dreaded the fawning social climbers of his Fathers court or the politicians of Earth.

Ultimately this all served to remind Thor that human lives were short and that the race was still heartbreakingly young. They showed enormous potential,but they did have their petty moments.

Without guiding stars to light their way, it was possible—dare he think likely?—they would lose their way as they grew older.

His kissed Jane’s hair again as he remembered Loki’s laughter the day before.

_“Did you see brother?! I caught a glimpse when I first came to control his mind through the Tesseract, but I had no idea I’d find such a rich trove! That their future was so ripe with horror! These humans you call kin will turn to so heinous a crime for entertainment after slaughtering each other in ways that make the worst of our wars look like children fighting for a toy! That is what you have thrown yourself in support of! This is almost better than the time magic I was hoping to get from him!”_

He’d been grateful when Sif had swiftly brought his bleeding, delusional brother to unconsciousness after that, but it had not been fast enough to calm the doubts rolling through Thor’s mind.

Thor was a Prince of Asgard, and while his Father was willing to indulge him to stay so long as his War Band lived, for if nothing else his service was as recompense for Loki’s actions, well….

Human lives were short.

Before they’d stopped the spell, they’d seen what the media now called a “World War 3”, too fractured from all the viewpoints of Clint’s ancestors to see the sundry details, but still enough to know that it was relatively soon in human development.

Many of the arguments in the press Thor and the others kept avoiding were the humans already fighting over whose fault it would be. The Asgardian couldn’t help but wonder in frustration as to why these people could not see that their arguments and finger pointing could very well lead to that dreaded future?

And he was caught in the middle of it.

_I don’t know what to do._

He didn’t realize that he had spoken that thought aloud until Clint called out, “Go to sleep, maybe?” softly from across the room. Thor started along with Natasha, barely checking himself as Jane mumbled and shifted in his arms.

Natasha was in full force at Clint’s side in a heartbeat, helping him raise his bed like he wanted. Seeing he was in good hands made Thor relax a bit, grateful that he would not have to wake his lady to assist the injured man.

Clint was glaring at Thor even as he drank the water Natasha handed him, and truthfully he could not blame him. Thor had promised that Loki was in safe keeping on Asgard, and this had happened.

“Stop it. I know a guilt trip when I see one, and this is Loki. This is _all_ Loki.”

“Sti-”

Clint continued to glare at Thor. "This is me giving you the ‘you're being stupid’ glare I normally give to newbie agents. You might have been worshipped as a deity before on Earth, but as far as I’m concerned you’re still the guy that freaked at the talking toaster and blew out the power in five floors frying it. No one is perfect.” Thor couldn’t help but smile into Jane’s hair at that. That was certainly true. Not even The Allfather was without flaw.

"Verily," Thor stated after a moment. But Thor still had powers beyond many of his mortal friends, and he would do what he could to take care of this world, even if his current comrades were long gone.

After all, the world still needed to birth the archer now smiling at him.

XxXxX

_25 Years, 2 Months, and 9 Days After Clint Barton Arrived in the Past_

If anyone had ever told a young Tony Stark that he’d one day be working on figuring out time travel with what amounted to a goddess, he would have laughed at them as he had them committed. It turned out that it was a complete blast, however. Thor’s mom, aside from being a Lady with a capital L that reminded him of the one time he’d met the Queen of England (he’d even made sure he wasn’t drunk for that one), had been fabulous as she explained what the Asgardians called ‘time magic’. She also seemed to enjoy enlightening Tony as to how Loki had been able to sense it on Clint and why the “modified” recall spell had even been able to work at all.

Basically the whole thing amounted to the fact that what had happened to Clint should have been impossible, which kind of explained why Loki was so interested in him. Clint was apparently completely meshed with his "new" timeframe, almost as if he was meant to be there, even though magic and science proved a thousand times over that he really was born years in the future. And frankly, well, now that they knew what they were looking for in Clint, all the small things that were off about his genetics made sense.

He had a slightly more advanced DNA structure, better vision, higher processing capabilities, etc.; nothing that was as forced as Cap, and nothing that didn’t need a lot of effort to make it be anything special, but it was enough that Clint was a cut above modern humanity for more than that loyal-to-the-end, do or die, slightly quirky personality that had everyone so willing to rewrite physics and magic so he could see his family again. See a family Clint had last seen defending him from some psychotic kidnappers that were bent on bringing back…  

Nope. Not thinking about that.

Seriously though, Clint needed to admit occasionally that he wanted something more than what he’d been given rather than just wistfully look into the distance as he oh so heroically told them not to spend the effort: that he had a home here with them.

In his past.

Man, Clint was from the future, and humanity turned into a bunch of jackasses. Tony had to pause over his screen as that hit him again even though he had been trying so hard not to think about it. Tony stepped back from his computer completely and turned to stare through the lab window at the sky over the sprawling New York cityscape. Even though he knew it in the way all engineers did in the back of their minds that the great structures they built would eventually fall, Tony wasn’t sure what to think of the sheer degradation of society that filled the future. He figured that it was likely the path humanity was headed down, what with over-population, consumerism, ambivalence of people, the constant corruption, etc. He hadn’t expected the horrors he’d seen in that, though. To see what was left of the United States be that depraved, and all those kids…

Tony barely made it to a trash can to throw up. He’d seen his own technology in the roots of what had been used to torture kids for the entertainment of the rich in the future. It had made keeping food down the last few days difficult. He hadn’t even had this type of reaction when he’d hit stateside after seeing soldiers blown to bits with his own weapons.

It was just, kids. _Kids_.

A rag that was mostly free of grease, machine oil, and other mysterious science substances dangled down to Tony’s left, and he glanced up to see it hanging from the deadly digits of the archer in question. The man  that, through being dumb enough to be dropped in a time portal, made Tony Stark actually think about morals and choices even more than he did on the all-too-frequent bad nights when he had minor relapses and horrible nightmares.

“Thanks, Clint,” he said as he snagged the cloth and wiped his mouth as he stood. He gratefully accepted the uncapped bottle of water that Clint handed to him next and swished the liquid around a little in his mouth before spitting it in his lab sink and then downing the rest. Clint just nodded slightly before wandering over to pick up the box Tony recognized as the one containing some new prototypes he’d shoved at Clint the morning before Loki had kidnapped him and unintentionally shoved the poor guys memories up for display over all of New York.

“My new flash bangs have the tendency to put the flash part in whatever I’m hitting if I don’t trigger them early enough. It limits the effectiveness.” Tony blinked at him for a minute, his mind automatically pulling up the designs. “The isotope trackers though, those rock. They let me follow Nat for half a day before she figured it out. I’m thinking if there was a way to make them disconnect from the shaft to make it less obvious? That or maybe make the shaft invisible?” That would actually be kind of fun. “Also, I might be unhealthily attached to that new grappling hook and system. We get that set up with that new impact suit you and Bruce were toying with, man, I’d be set for almost any height!” Tony couldn’t help but smirk at the praise that was delivered with one of Clint’s rare, blinding smiles.

 While Tony had first scoffed at the thought of someone using a bow and arrow with today’s technology, Clint made it work. It wasn’t that he wasn’t effective with guns or any of the other deadly things on the market, but put a bow in his hands and Clint was something else. That coupled with his amazing strategic thinking, and he more than earned his spot on the Avengers.

It didn’t hurt that in between fights he had the tendency to really look after the others. He’d taken to the team as his family, even more than the others.

“Still against an actual suit though?”

“Being awesome and kicking ass is your thing; I’m just your backup.”

Oh yeah, time travel was so in the bag.

XxXxX

_25 Years and 9 Months After Incident_

His name when he was born had been Rye. It had been a tribute to the more prevalent food and a friend of his Mother that had died.

Even he hadn’t known how that friend, Rue, had died until he’d seen the genetic memories of his that had been splayed over New York City. He’d still been too young to have that history class, but now that he thought about it he remembered when his sister had.

The way she’d questioned her parents and how they’d stayed with his Aunt Sae that night because Dad had had one of his attacks.

It had seemed impossible then, his parents being heroes to anyone but him. His parents had been his parents.

And now, he was doing something he had never thought he would be able to do.

He was seeing his parents in more than just a memory.

His sister, terrified, was crouching next to his parents from where she had already been rescued by a man under Uncle Gale’s command.

Clint wasn’t sure what the portal he and the Avengers were currently starring at looked like from the other side, but he really didn’t care. He carefully drew his bow, taking in the measure of the monsters in human guise, one of those who had threatened his family so long ago, so many years in the future. The first one he aimed for was standing stock still in apparent shock next to a control panel on the other side of the raised dais that held the time travel beam Clint had fallen through that Tony and Freiga had hijacked for their portal. Clint exhaled, letting the arrow loose.

The shaft flew straight, slamming into the man’s eye and Hawkeye smiled at the clean shot even as he notched another arrow and started thinning the ranks of the now scrambling bad guys, Natasha and Cap’s guns sounding occasionally beside him, and he even heard Tony’s repulser blast go off a few times. His Uncle Gale and his people were taking advantage of the situation to take care of the fools that wanted to bring back the glory of the Capital.

It took a few moments, and Clint could see the grief-stricken look on her face, before his Mother was suddenly in motion. Clint couldn’t help watch as his parents. Neither of them were soldiers, but they could fight. They’d never really said why, but it was a daily thing, them going for runs together in the woods, his Mother practicing with a bow, his Father lifting weights and going at an old punching bag…

Clint’s aim was better than his Mother’s, but not by much. She was still felling enemy after enemy from a distance, covering Gale and picking up the angles that Clint and the others couldn’t quite get.

When one of the mooks managed to get close to his sister (had she really been that young?), Clint didn’t really even blink as his Dad caught him and dropped him hard enough that Clint was pretty sure his neck had broken.

When Clint was down to about half a quiver, the fight switched footing as the bad guys regrouped, and started firing back at the portal with a few weapons that seemed to be a mix of futuristic flame throwers and ballistic missiles.

Before Clint could really think it over, he was throwing himself through the portal, Natasha cursing as she dove after him.

He didn’t know what to think when the others followed them.

XxXxX

Clint fiddled with his bow as he hovered near the portal back to the past, not sure what to think or say.

Tony didn’t seem to have that issue, as he was abrasively asking questions of the captured, shell-shocked scientists, and Hulk was having fun trying to catch the floating camera bots. Cap was near them, trying to reassure Pepper and the others back home that they were okay, since apparently their comm links worked through the portal. Thor was starring oddly at Uncle Gale, who was holding an impromptu “magic portal people, what the F are we doing now?” meeting with most of his people who were quite happily to giving the Avengers wide birth at this point, and Clint didn’t know what to think of it. Natasha hadn’t left his side. She was hovering and glaring at anyone that got too close and Clint was decidedly grateful for it.

“But I want Rye, Momma!” Clint’s head snapped to the area that he had been trying desperately to not to look at.

His Mother was wrapped desperately around his Sister, holding her tight, his Dad hovering over them protectively.

Both his parents looked heartbroken.

“Aren’t you going to go to them?” Steve asked, apparently done with reassuring the folks on the other end.

Clint tilted his head contemplatively. “What would I say? I mean, look at me. They lost a kid, and whatever fancy titles or reasons you use, I’m a murderer for a government organization. I’m bad with people normally and I didn’t ever think I’d see them again, so I have nothing planned. I don’t know what I would say that could explain this.”

“Idiot,” Natasha hissed, “they’re your parents, and they’re strong.”

“Take it from the time displaced soldier, Clint,” he turned and looked at Cap, “if I had the chance to go back, and see everyone I was separated from, even if they had a hard time understanding why I looked the same 80 years later, I'd still tell them that I love them, and that I miss them."

Clint looked between his field leader and his best friend before nodding, and tentatively took a step towards his parents before glancing back at Natasha again. “Stay with me?”

“Always,” Nat said with a smile, taking his hand for a moment before they made their way to his family. A few people looked as if they would move to get between them and the grieving family, but his Uncle Gale waved them off, meeting his eyes for a moment before nodding him forward, something akin to understanding in his eyes.

Clint stopped several feet away from his family, and took comfort from the warmth of the hand that Nat placed on his back.

“What?” His Mother hissed at him over his Sister’s head, which was tucked beneath her chin.

Clint froze.

His silence seemed to radiate out, and the quiet seemed to take over the room to the point where Clint couldn’t even hear Tony in the background.

“Momma, Poppa, Cin…”

“What? How dare you! Who are you?” His Mother’s voice was poisonous, and his Father was starting to get that look that meant they’d be staying with either Aunt Sae or Uncle Haymitch.

“I… just, it’s me.”

“I don-” his Father placed a hand on his Mother’s shoulder, and she bit off what she was saying to look at him. The look was getting worse, to the point he could feel Natasha’s hand start to tense on his back.

“Rye?” He practically whispered, and all Clint could do was choke back a sob building in his throat as he nodded.

“What?” His Mother snapped as she stood, Cinnie sliding to her feet beside her. “I don’t - Rye?”

His Mother, his strong, glorious Mother, took a few shaking steps towards him, her hand reaching out to touch his face. He couldn’t move as she carefully traced her fingers along his jaw, looking into his eyes with dawning realization before she finally gasped in recognition.

“How?” came out in a hushed breath, and Clint couldn’t tell if what he choked back this time was a sob or a laugh.

“Time travel,” he answered as steadily as he could. “Sadly not the weirdest thing to ever happen to me. I’m sorry it took me so long to come home, Momma.”

His Mother’s face shattered and she threw her arms around him, his name cried over the room as she nearly wailed into his neck. Before Clint could even think what to do his Dad was right there with her, holding him so tightly that Clint’s ribs ached. His parents were…were hugging him. His parents.

“Momma, Poppa….” Rye’s hands where somehow clutching at them, and he buried himself in their embrace as all three of them somehow fell to their knees.

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed there like that. It was long enough that when Rye looked up again Bruce had de-Hulked and was chatting with Tony, Cap and Thor were in a deep conversation with Uncle Gale on something that had Thor looking extremely thoughtful. Natasha had fallen into an almost parade rest near his sister who hadn’t moved from where their Mother had left her. She simply stood there watching them carefully, the only person in the room that didn’t have their eyes deliberately turned from their little reunion.

Rye couldn’t remember if she was ten or eleven.

“I’ll need more than Time Travel, young man,” his Mother said with the look she got when she knew that he had filched the last cookie.

“I can help with that, Katniss.” Nearly as one they turned and looked at his Uncle Gale who was walking up to them, Cap and Thor with him.

“Gale?”

“To be specific, a combination of Mr. Stark, Dr. Banner, the Lady Frigga, and the assorted greatest scientific and magical minds of two worlds created what is essentially a quantum field that can redirect an existing wormhole through time, rather than just dimension.”

“How did you know that?” Tony snapped as he cleared the room to glare suspiciously at Gale, Bruce right behind him.

“In a way I do not think we considered, my friends,” Thor said, still looking at Gale contemplatively.

“What does that mean?” Peeta asked warily. “Happy as I am that my son isn’t dead, I’d like to know how he went from eight to as old as me in the span of five minutes. Preferably an explanation that isn’t ridiculously vague or incomprehensible.”

“Momma-”

“It’s okay, Rye, and man is that weird,” Gale said with a smile. Then, almost nervously, Gale raised his hand in the air in a movement reminiscent of Thor calling his hammer, and sure enough, fairly quickly a heavy, leather wrapped staff blasted through a wall and smacked into Gale’s hand, lightning playing over his frame.

By the time it was done, Gale looked about fifteen years younger and was covered in clearly Asgardian armor, complete with long red cape.

“Did not see that coming.” Tony muttered.

Gale smiled tightly, “Suffice to say, that though the close alliance between Midgard and Asgard has faltered of late, it has become custom that all born to the noble houses must spend a human life on Earth, to help recognize the privilege we are blessed with, and learn the truth of our hearts.”

“I could feel the magic from him shortly after our arrival and confronted him to learn his part, if any, in the actions that caused our Hawkeye to be sent back,” Thor stated.

“And? How did these guys get their hands on time travel tech that took mine and Bruce’s Awesomeness combined with Thor’s Mom’s scariness? ” Tony raised an eyebrow.

“I was instructed to provide the following answer to your questions by my Father: ‘Spoilers’ and,” Gale seemed to brace himself a little, wincing, “’wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.’”

Tony actually stuttered, and Clint couldn’t help but laugh.

“Sounds good to me,” Cap grinned.

“Gale?” Katniss asked, and Rye looked at his Mother, not sure what to take from the look on her face, or the tone of her voice.

“I am so sorry, Katniss. I am. If I could have done something that wouldn’t have altered the time stream-” he looked sadly at Rye, and the resurfacing part of him that was Clint understood. “This is technology that should have been lost, remnants of the war that reshaped the Earth, lead to the creation of Panam and caused so many of the horrors the Capital used to oppress people for so long, essentially a wormhole through time, and those idiots had no idea what they were messing with somehow managed to fiddle with it enough and lucked into it matching the timing of one of our bridges which created a portal through time, to the past.”

“Our? You’re really some kind of alien, Hawthorne?” Rye’s Dad asked, with a raised eyebrow.

“Stormgale Thorson, second son of the Allfather, Thor, King of Asgard. So yes, alien. You Midgardians even once worshipped my kind as Gods.”

“Well, sh-” Bruce slapped his hand over Tony’s mouth.

“As a member of the Royal Family, I am not exempt from the tradition of a mortal's lifetime’s fosterage on Earth. My Father,” Gale nodded to Thor, who was distinctly stone faced, “knew the day might come when the Alliances of old between Asgard and Midgard would be rekindled, and determined I would watch and help as I could, and be allowed access to my magic if something beyond the bounds of human ability appeared.”

He turned and bowed his head to Katniss and Peeta sadly. “Please believe me when I say that I have tried before this to summon my power without success. On the day you volunteered, I tried, Katniss.”

An awkward silence fell over the group before Bruce spoke up and shattered it.

“Knew the day might come?”

“Yes,” Gale sighed. “You will learn, from this and other things, that time is strange. It is not absolute. Things can change, cause different outcomes than what you may have known previously. It is entirely possible that events would have progressed in a way that would not have had Rye grow up in the past, separated from his blood family. That would have further changed things as the Avenger Clint Barton, Hawkeye, would not be there.” Gale shrugged, “Time is not fixed.”

Things were quiet, as they processed this fact.

“Yes, but our time here is, as much as I’d like to grill you more,” Bruce smiled sadly. “The Arc’s going to run out of energy, dropping the bridge in a few minutes, and the form of this that sent Clint back was actually random, so I’d prefer to not trust it.”

“Varily, Dr. Banner. We should hasten our return, for I fear I have already learned much that should have remained clouded.” Thor decreed.

Almost as one the group turned to look at the unusually quiet Clint, whose parents were still holding his shoulders, keeping him close.

XxXxX

Natasha hovered in the background, watching the new players in her life as they maneuvered around Clint. She was pleased to see that even though they were obviously confused as to how Clint could now be an adult when they saw him as an eight year old just moments ago, they recognized him and how precious he was. 

If she and Clint ended up staying here, she was fairly certain she’d be able to get along with them.

Still, as she watched Clint’s parents, Katniss and Peeta, as the others dealt with meeting Thor’s son and everything else, she could see them looking at each other and their still silent daughter as if silently weighing options together in the way particularly close couples or friends could. The way she and Clint could lay out an entire plan and five contingencies with a glance.

When Bruce brought up the elephant in the room about their impromptu trip being over, everyone else turned to Clint. Natasha kept her gaze fixed on his parents.

“I-“

Clint was cut off by his Mother hugging him tightly, his Father not far behind.

“You’re going with them, Rye. Back to the - I can’t believe I am saying this, back to the past.” Katniss said, steel in her voice.

“Momma-”

“Your Momma is right, son, and you’re going, even if I have to pick you up and throw you through that portal myself.” Natasha decided that she really like Clint’s parents.

“But-“

“You know that you and your sister are the most precious things to us in the world, but you were a smart kid. You had to know that we both have our issues,” Katniss said softly and with no small amount of regret. Natasha nodded. From the screens, they both had severe PTSD at the very least. “We got lucky with being able to handle each other, and with you and your sister being too smart for your own good, we could manage. But with you suddenly being older, we don’t know…” Katniss choked up.

“We don’t know how we’ll react, and you’re damn good in a fight, but we could hurt you, even if we didn’t mean to. Maybe not physically, but there are other ways.” Peeta finished, pulling Clint’s head forward so their foreheads were leaning on each other.

“The risk might be worth it, if you didn’t have an amazing family that loves you, and is there for you.” Katniss said, with a teary smile as she looked over the Avengers. Natasha had never been more proud of the Avengers, of the team they had created, then right at that moment when each one met the eyes of a grieving Mother and silently swore to her that they would be there for her baby when she couldn’t be.

“Rye?” Came the tentative voice of Clint’s sister, and as one they all looked at her. She shrank a little, before blatantly gathering her courage and stepping forward, raising her chin and then her arm in a three fingered salute. “Burn bright and fly high, little brother.”

“Cinnie….” Clint whispered. Natasha knew Clint well enough to realize that something inside of him was breaking just a little. Clint stepped back from his parents and smiled a tight, small smile. “I love you all, and I miss you more than words can say, every day.”

His sister dropped her salute and her brave face and darted to hug her brother once, quickly and fiercely, before rushing to her Father, hugging him and burying her face in his chest.

One by one, the Avengers turned to move through to the portal, Thor making a quick comment to Gale to destroy the device which he acknowledged with a bow, until it was just Clint staring at his family with Natasha beside him.

“Go. And you remember that we love you, more than life itself,” Katniss ordered, and with a nod Clint turned to Natasha and as one they headed to the portal back home, pausing only at the threshold for Clint to turn and raise his arm in before they disappeared in a flash of white.

XxXxX

Phil Coulson stared at monitor sitting on his desk on the bus, watching the view of the Avengers main living space where Clint was currently curled up with his head on Natasha's lap. His teammates and their various significant others and friends had taken to quietly occupying different areas of the room around them.

He wished he could be there, could keep Clint and Natasha close and make sure the others didn't overwhelm them in their push to let them both know they were loved. He wished he could make sure that Thor was dealing with the knowledge of his Father’s dying relatively soon, that he would take the throne and that he would eventually have a son, things that had probably still been a little abstract for him. He wished that he could prevent Tony from spiraling down like he had when he’d returned from Afghanistan or when he’d thought he was dying.

He switched to a recording of Clint's memories. With the bits and pieces of various films placed on the net and security camera recordings, they had almost everything, and their transcript of the vocal pieces was almost verbatim at this point. He moved to the section of a tiny, eight-year-old Clint huddling in woods next to a fallen tree, one of his Mother's arrows clutched to his chest, a dead body on the ground in front of him. His wide, multi-colored eyes stared out of the recall, almost the only color really visible.

Phil ran a finger over the boy’s cheek, his touch pausing the recording. "You'll be okay." Phil felt a little embarrassed for talking to a mere image of a heartbreakingly young version of his friend, but he couldn't exactly talk to Clint right now and he needed to say this. "You have an amazing family, then and now. It can take us a while to get our stuff together, but we're here for you, for real. I promise."

XxXxX

The End

XxXxX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s done! 
> 
> The names of Katniss and Peeta’s kids: I decided that in the end, Katniss would name her kids after people she loved, and Peeta wouldn’t really argue, but at the same time they wouldn’t give them the names themselves to try and avoid triggers. 
> 
> Thus their first kid, their daughter, is named Cinnick, after Cinna and Finnick, but is nick named Cinnie. Their second kid, aka Clint, is Rye, basically after Rue as well as the grain Rye (Peeta may have had a little bit of a hand in that).
> 
> On the Natasha piece where she helped Clint place flowers on Bobbi, it got called out that may be a bit OOC. I basically came at the scene from the mindset of Natasha being in shock, and doing stuff she might normally have done as she tried to figure Clint out.
> 
> Bobbi, aka, Mockingbird – she’s an awesome fighter that has a long standing on and off again relationship with Clint in at least one comic verse. 
> 
> The other guy with a bow - Barney Barton – Clint’s big brother, aka the sometimes bad guy Trickshot. Needs to get an arrow to the knee.

**Author's Note:**

> Bobby Morse = Mockingbird, it hurt us precious to kill her off, but I think it fit the story.  
> Clint's mentors and brother = jerks, his brother gets better, kind of....


End file.
